In the pharmaceutical industry, the primary method for product promotion of ethical products is the use of outside sales representatives. Company sales representatives target specific physicians and detail the features and benefits of particular pharmaceutical products. Pharmaceutical manufacturers have documented that the most effective method of product promotion involves providing pharmaceutical product samples to prescribers of the products who then pass along the product samples to patients. Physicians therefore receive numerous quantities of pharmaceutical product samples for purposes of conducting patient trials. These trials enable physicians to determine the effectiveness of certain drugs in certain patients for certain diseases, as well as to determine patients' tolerance of the drugs and their compliance with drug administration directions.
Drug manufacturers are continually looking for new and better ways to advertise and promote their prescription drugs. As discussed above, providing sample or trial pharmaceutical products to doctors who in turn give them to patients constitutes one important way that pharmaceutical entities are presently promoting their pharmaceutical products to both doctors and patients. However comprehensive and accurate data that might indicate the effectiveness of such sample or trial programs is difficult to achieve because of a lack of substantial record keeping involving the sample or trial products. Further, in many cases, the doctor will give a patient enough sample or trial products to complete the entire treatment. For a certain promotion budget this obviously limits the exposure of the pharmaceutical sample being promoted.
Although product samples are an extremely effective promotional tool, the manufacturing of drug product samples in addition to normally packaged drug products has proven to be increasingly costly. Pharmaceutical product samples are typically elaborately and expensively packaged and are extremely bulky compared to normally packaged drug products. Pharmaceutical manufacturers must utilize separate product sample packaging lines to specially package drug product samples. Distribution of product samples requires delivery via separate carriers and distribution routes. In addition, drug product samples are typically warehoused separately from normally packaged drug products.
Therefore, there has been and continues to be a need for an efficient and cost effective method for promoting pharmaceutical prescription products.